NY Jets: 4 players who could be traded during the 2021 NFL Draft

The NY Jets are undergoing a significant transformation in philosophy on the field and off.

On the football side, it’s one that will see a dramatic shift in the team’s offensive and defensive schemes and a change in the types of players the brand new coaching staff, led by Robert Saleh, will covet to operate within those systems.

The transformative process has already begun, but it’s still a work in progress finding the right people and players who will fit the new regime’s model.

And part of that process is identifying players on the current roster who don’t fit. It’s not always about who you add but also who you subtract.

Saleh and the coaches he hired on his staff inherited a Jets team that teetered on the brink of going winless a year ago. With that reality has come several different changes to the team’s roster, with potentially more on the way come draft week.

Many of the players who were supposed to be cornerstone pieces for the Jets franchise are long gone, and a whole new crop of drafted players and free agents are coming in to assume those roles.

A true testament to how much ownership and the previous regime failed to get the franchise back to respectability.

In many respects, even though Jets general manager Joe Douglas shares in the blame for the franchise’s failings the last two seasons, Douglas is also sharing in the same starting point that the new coaching staff is.

While Saleh and his staff are starting fresh immediately, it took Joe Douglas two years to reach this point. He has a new lease on life as general manager. Year three on the job has allowed Douglas to press the reset button with Gang Green.

In his defense, starting with a clean slate wasn’t something that Douglas was afforded back in 2019. After all, the Jets GM inherited an entire coaching staff, strength and conditioning department, and roster that he had no say in when he was appointed.

And ever since then, Douglas has been stripping those parts away. The old coaching staff is gone, the Jets have created a brand-new health and performance department, and very few players that Douglas inherited when he took the job in the summer of 2019 are still on the roster.

And the ones that remain could be experiencing their last days as members of the Jets.

Since 2019, gone are the likes of Leonard Williams, Trumaine Johnson, Avery Williamson, Jamal Adams, Sam Darnold, Robby Anderson, Henry Anderson, Le’Veon Bell, Jordan Jenkins, etc.

Some of these decisions by Douglas are open for debate and scrutiny. The one common trait that all these players have is that not one of them was drafted, signed, or acquired by Douglas.

With a new coaching staff looking for specific types of players and a GM who might not be done shedding the previous regime’s past sins, there are still several players in limbo currently on the Jets roster.

Let’s take a look at precisely four of them, who all have some level of trade value, and who could be shopped and/or dealt during 2021 NFL Draft weekend.

Next: 4. Chris Herndon